PETE PAPHIDES
On his 1970 album Beware Of he Beautiful Stranger, with lyrics written by a young Clive James, Pete Atkin sings, “Touch has a memory/ Better than the other senses.” Today, I hold that record into the light and I’m transported to the day I first happened upon it. It’s suddenly eight months ago – I’m at Kingbee Records in Chorlton, having dropped of my kids at Manchester MEN Arena where they’re of to see he 1975. To stare at its sleeve is to remember the journey up from London; the two hours in a record shop with barely a soul in the world knowing where I am; the catnapping in a Manchester car park that evening as I wait for my kids to get in the car sweaty from an incredible gig; and the efusive chatter of the drive back to London, slowly fading into teenage slumber.
Touch does indeed have a memory. he £3.95 sticker on the copy of he Notorious Byrd Brothers, bought on my first trip to Hag’s Record Shop in Lampeter, propels me back to the shop whose existence probably made the diference between me staying at university there and giving up ater one term. he corner snipped of the sleeve of Talk Talk’s Mirror Man catapults me to the Woolworths on Birmingham New Street with a box of reduced singles sitting on the countertop. It’s December 1982. I’ve never heard Talk Talk, but I’ve read a piece in the local paper about how they’re set to follow in the footsteps of label mates Duran Duran. I take it home and realise that actually this doesn’t sound like the work of mainstream pop contenders.